11/18/05

AN ENGLISH aristocrat and a Chinese zoologist have realised their dream by introducing a breed of deer that was once extinct in China to a Yangtze River swamp.

Lord Russell, a son of the late 14th Duke of Bedford, became the first member of his family to see the Père David deer running wild in the Tian’e Zhou nature reserve yesterday — something that his father made possible.

Hundreds of the animals grazed among reed beds; a stag, its towering antlers festooned with weeds and twigs, watched over his harem although his ancestors were hunted to extirpation one thousand years ago.